Here it is! The first installment of getting what you vote for. Looky Here!
Monthly Archives: November 2010
Job Standards…1943
The July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine offered these Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees:
General experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious.
Get enough size variety in operator’s uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can’t be stressed too much in keeping women happy.
Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive.
Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes.
Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology.
I’m sure that if a woman had written similar standards for dealing with men, she would have had some equally interesting points to make. Unions played a major role in trying to eliminate this kind of prejudice from the workplace.
UPS Drivers May Have Been Biggest Losers in Election
When FedEx wins, UPS loses. That’s you.
High wages and benefits that out distance the competition cannot go on forever. There will have to be parity for UPS to continue to compete. If FedEx wages do not go up, UPS wages must come down. If we have high unemployment going into the 2013 negotiations, will UPS take on the Teamsters again? We had low unemployment and high prosperity in 1997 when the Teamsters enjoyed vast public support for the strike and took UPS to the mat. That may not be the case in 2013. Negotiations begin almost a year before the contract expires. That’s 2012, not that far away. Could you stay out this time for a month? Two months?
I hope eveyone is putting some money aside.
FedEx Among Big Winners in Midterm Elections
WASHINGTON — One of the biggest corporate winners after Tuesday night’s watershed Republican House victories will be Memphis-based FedEx Corp., which can abandon fears that pending legislation will upset its existing labor relations.
“I think they dodged a bullet,” said David Schaffer, a Vienna, Va.-based aviation consultant and former counsel to the House aviation subcommittee.
Schaffer said it’s still possible the lame-duck Congress could pass a new, multiyear Federal Aviation Administration bill, but “I don’t think it could pass with the FedEx provision in it.”
FedEx has deployed an army of lobbyists in recent years and established a public relations campaign to defeat the provision that would have reclassified some FedEx employees under the National Labor Relations Act, allowing them to form local bargaining units that could strike and upset the company’s reputation for reliability.
The author of that provision, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., lost his re-election Tuesday night.
The committee will be chaired by U.S. Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, come January.
Oberstar was FedEx CEO Frederick W. Smith’s nemesis during the height of the public relations struggle last summer.
He accused Smith of “misleading the public” with a campaign accusing rival UPS of seeking a “bailout” with the labor provision.
FedEx spokesman Maury Lane said Wednesday that Smith would have no comment on Oberstar’s loss.
Lane said, “Yesterday’s election results clearly showed that the American people will no longer tolerate special-interest legislative bailouts. FedEx Express will continue to oppose legislative initiatives that do not support marketplace competition and promote reliability in the overnight package delivery industry.”
Both UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters sought the labor language to make it easier for FedEx’s truck drivers and other employees that don’t require FAA certification to organize.
Teamsters spokeswoman Leigh Strope said the union was “very saddened” by Oberstar’s defeat.
“Jim Oberstar recognized that FedEx Express, hiding under the guise of an airline, was wrong and unfair to its work force and the rest of package delivery industry,” Strope said. “The work that he started will be carried on by others who support fair competition and giving workers the right to organize.”
Both sides of the fight spent heavily, but U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who defied his Transportation Committee chairman in voting against the provision, agreed FedEx is now better off.
“I’m sure FedEx is a big winner because, with Republicans in control of the House, that provision would never get through,” Cohen said.
Bartholomew Sullivan, The Commercial Appeal
Peak Punishment
It’s almost Peak Punishment time. It’s time for the company to use and abuse the people that have been their “humper dumpers”, 
The sound of squealing “humpers” can be heard throughout the building, as the company heaps on the stops. Silliness like the “400 club”, and the “Production Club” rears it’s ugly head. Unfortunately many of the “lesser knowledgable” drivers get sucked into the lunacy. Many will be injured, and many will have accidents trying to produce up to the insane levels of expectation.
Any driver that’s been through a few Peaks will tell you, “continue to work at a safe pace”. “Get done what you can get done, and let management worry about their insane expectations”.
Accidents and injuries will still cost you your job, even at Peak. Even the greatest Producers have been fired during Peak for major accidents. Being injured at Peak is the cardinal “no-no”. Once you are injured, management will cop a, “you just couldn’t do it” attitude. You will “forever after” have the reputation of being a wimp, and falling down on the job when the company needed you the most.
It will just be another attack by the “abusive daddy”.
Given the economic, and political climate, the push will be even greater, so prepare yourself.
Do not get sucked in!
Expecting Representation
Most of the time a simple question, or statement, can trigger the system to work in the favor of the driver. The contract provides for the rights of the driver, and sets up a formal procedure to be followed to address the driver’s issues with the company. Many drivers simply do not avail themselves of their rights. OF course when the issues build to overflowing, the drivers will often attack the Teamsters for not being there to represent them when they have problems. They will often bad mouth the Union to their fellow drivers, sending the message that the Teamsters are useless, and they are paying dues for nothing.
All they had to do was open their mouths and ask!
Many of the drivers just think they can live a passive life, where anyone, and everyone, will simply jump forth and take care of them, without the driver having to put forth any effort at all. The driver sees everything vividly in their own mind, and they assume that the guy next to them, or the steward, or the Business Agent, sees things the same way. They project their laziness, and lack of effort onto everyone else, not taking responsibility for their actions, or lack thereof.
When you hear another driver bad-mouthing the Union, ask them a simple question, “Who did you tell about your problems?”. Very often the answer will be management, not the Steward. Very often it will be the Supervisor that told the driver that no one could help him, and he was just out of luck. “Tough crap for having to pay his Union dues”.
Of course they have all been listening to the pundits during the day, telling them how bad the Union is for them, and how the Union is just there to take their money. Another consequence of a lazy mind.
The driver also knows that he or she is the most valuable person in the world, and even without the Union, they would be worth the pay and benefit package they receive. Yes, in fact, many of the drivers are just simply delusional. It goes on day after day. They are their own worst enemy.
The Union is there for your benefit. Demand the representation you deserve, and support the representation you get.
Just remember, no one can read your mind, and you’re not the only person on earth!
Thinking Like a Steward
Free Speech for Whom?
A most glaring example of the power imbalance on the job concerns the freedom of speech. Often celebrated as the most cherished right of a free citizen, most Americans are astonished to learn that freedom of speech does not extend to the workplace, or at least not to workers. It is literally true that free speech exists for bosses, but not workers.
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights applies only to the encroachment by government on citizens’ speech. It does not protect workers’ speech, nor does it forbid the “private” denial of freedom of speech. Moreover, in a ruling that further tilted the balance of power (against workers) in the workplace, the Supreme Court held that corporations are “persons” and therefore must be afforded the protection of the Bill of Rights.
So, any legislation (e.g. the National Labor Relations Act) or agency (e.g. the National Labor Relations Board) that seek to restrict a corporate “person’s” freedom of speech, is unacceptable. Employers’ First Amendment rights mean that they are entitled to hold “captive audience meetings” – compulsory sessions in which management lectures employees on the employers’ views of unions. Neither employees nor their unions have the right of response.
It’s almost as if the worksite is not a part of the United States. Workers “voluntarily” relinquish their rights when they enter into an employment relationship. So, workers can be disciplined by management (with no presumption of innocence) and they can be denied freedom of speech by their employer. The First Amendment only protects persons (including transnational corporations designated as persons) against the infringement of their rights by government – but not the infringement of rights of real persons (workers) by the private concentration of power and wealth, known as corporations.
Such limitations on workers’ rights are incompatible with the requirements of a genuine democracy. In comparison to European countries, the legal rights of workers in the US are remarkably limited. For a country that prides itself on individual rights, how can we permit the wholesale denial of those rights for tens of millions of American workers?
Think about it.